Fred Eychaner

The reclusive local millionaire is one of the nation's top Democratic donors, but he lives a remarkably frugal life and insists on not being photographed

June 07, 2005|By John McCormick, Tribune staff reporter

Northwestern classmates remember him as a smart, assertive student who was more interested in the business of printing than in the craft of storytelling. During breaks from school, he worked at a DeKalb radio station and hustled reporting and printing jobs, including one for a winning area high school football team.

"He had me write it, and he went out and sold it," said Jerry Smith, now the executive director of the DeKalb County Community Foundation. "You know who made money on the thing. He gave me a hundred bucks."

Five years out of college, Eychaner founded Newsweb Corp. in 1971 to continue his printing business, which grew as he added contracts for foreign-language and alternative papers.

"For decades, they have been this great backbone in printing," said Tracy Baim, editor and publisher of the Windy City Times, a Newsweb client whose weekly newspaper focuses on Chicago's gay community.

From its offices at 1645 W. Fullerton Ave., Newsweb still prints the Chicago Reader, a client since the weekly's inception.

A `sense of trend'

Eychaner, who sported a ponytail during his early business years, was quick to realize that computers were going to change the printing business and allow new niche publications to flourish.

"Anyone who wanted to turn out a newspaper could, and that was something that Fred perceived very early," said Bruce Sagan, a retired publisher and printer who competed against Eychaner. "His sense of trend has been his most enormous asset, and that has guided his investments."

After building a successful printing business, Eychaner began buying other media entities, including small radio stations.

He invested in family-owned companies on the brink of being sold. He decries the consolidation of the media industry and loss of independent voices, but it is exactly that trend that has helped build his fortune.

He made millions when The Des Moines Register was sold to Gannett Co. in 1985. An investment in the Detroit Evening News also proved lucrative when Gannett bought that paper.

In the late 1970s, Eychaner's eye turned to television. A series of purchases and license trades ended with him owning WPWR-Ch. 50 in Chicago, an investment that proved golden. A week after the $425 million sale to Fox Television was announced in 2002, he rewarded full-time employees with bonuses of $1,000 for each year of service to his company.

He has recently accelerated his investments in radio, buying five area stations last year. His companies also own land in the city worth millions, including the ground under the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers.

Eychaner said estimates of his net worth are inflated, largely because he has given away so much. Asked whether it approaches $500 million, a figure mentioned by former business associates and Forbes magazine, he responded with a line from his friend Bill Clinton.

"It depends on what the definition of `is' is," he said.

Democratic heroes

Typical Democratic icons are not the names Eychaner first lists when asked about his political heroes. Instead, he mentions U.S. Rep. Lane Evans, a Democrat from Rock Island who is fighting Parkinson's disease, and Rep. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Madison, Wis., who is the only open lesbian in the U.S. House.

His political roots grew during the late 1970s, when he became involved with the gay-rights movement. Around the same time, in his mid-30s, Eychaner told his parents he was gay, something he had confided to friends several years earlier.

AIDS has been a major focus for Eychaner. He calls the disease, which killed many of his friends in the 1970s and 1980s, the "most important issue in my life."

His contributions to the AIDS Foundation of Chicago have made him that group's largest private donor. He is also expected to be the biggest contributor to a Clinton Foundation project that will focus on prevention and treatment in China.

Unlike his political contributions, which are public because of disclosure laws, Eychaner's massive charitable giving is often invisible. Mention his name to the head librarian in the southern Illinois town of Anna, for example, and she responds with puzzled silence.

Then ask her about the Alphawood Foundation, and she comes to life with praise for the money that helped fix her crumbling yet architecturally significant downtown library.

"They have helped us with things that never would have happened otherwise," said Lisa Livesay, the head librarian at Stinson Memorial Library, where Alphawood paid for about a third of a $150,000 renovation.

The self-financed foundation, worth $141 million last year, is larger than the Oprah Winfrey Foundation and Ronald McDonald House Charities. Reflecting Eychaner's longtime interests in dance and architecture, he and his foundation were instrumental in bringing the Joffrey Ballet to Chicago and saving Mies' historic Farnsworth House in Plano.